Budget details for state prison, jail spending

Thursday

Jan 9, 2014 at 3:00 PM

(AP) - Gov. Jerry Brown's budget for the coming fiscal year includes several proposals to help comply with a federal court order requiring the state to reduce prison overcrowding by mid-April to improve medical and mental health care for inmates.

(AP) - Gov. Jerry Brown's budget for the coming fiscal year includes several proposals to help comply with a federal court order requiring the state to reduce prison overcrowding by mid-April to improve medical and mental health care for inmates.

It also assists counties that are increasingly handling felons who previously would have been housed in state prisons.

The Brown administration will take steps immediately that lead to the earlier release of some inmates, as previously ordered by the federal judges. Those steps include expanding the existing medical parole program that in the last three years has allowed for the parole of 56 medically incapacitated inmates; considering parole for inmates age 60 or older who have served at least 25 years in prison; and increasing good-time credits for non-violent second-strike offenders. Second-strikers previously could earn up to 20 percent off their sentences, but in the future could be released after serving two-thirds of their sentences.

Brown's budget did not project how many inmates might be freed earlier as a result.

On Thursday, he said his administration is still asking for a two-year extension of the April 18 deadline to allow the state to add more prison cells and hospital beds. If the court declines, the governor said he is prepared to send another 4,000 inmates to private prisons out of state.

"We think we can get the extension. And if we don't, then we'll do the best we can to make sure that we have the capacity," he said.

Other prison-related aspects of the budget proposal released Thursday:

— Frees up $81 million for rehabilitation programs that otherwise would be spent to house inmates, if the federal judges grant the two-year extension to meet a court-ordered prison population cap.

— Spends $8.3 million to redesign the 600-bed Northern California Reentry Facility in Stockton, although it will take more than two years to ready the facility to house male inmates.

— Adds $14 million to fight the smuggling of drugs and other contraband, including cellphones.

— Allocates nearly $65 million for the Department of State Hospitals to help the agency deal with a more violent mentally ill population that increasingly comes from the criminal justice system. A U.S. District judge last year ordered increased federal oversight after finding problems with the department's treatment of mentally ill inmates.

— Gives counties $500 million for new jail space, on top of $500 million that is now being distributed through a competitive grant program. The proposal requires that counties demonstrate they are taking steps to lower their jail populations by freeing more suspects who are awaiting trial.

— Inmates sentenced to more than 10 years in county jails under the state's two-year-old criminal justice realignment law would again serve their time in state prisons. That would increase the prison population by a projected 300 inmates, felons that sheriffs have said they are not equipped to handle. The shift would come only if the state is able to comply with federal judges' prison crowding reduction order.

— Reduces the cost to counties to send local inmates to state-run firefighting camps. Counties have said the current $46 daily rate is too costly. Counties would pay $10 a day for each inmate at a firefighting camp, and $81 each day the inmates are being trained.

— Requires that all felony sentences served in county jails be split between jail time and mandatory supervision, unless a judge concludes that a split sentence is not in the interest of justice.